Coping Strategies for Online Learning from Home

Abstract

The closure of schools as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented situation where parents have to take an active role in their children's learning process. This fact has generated both positive and negative emotions and behaviors that had not been evidenced before. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the coping strategies used by parents and their perceptions regarding online learning methods during the pandemic. The research was carried out with a mixed approach, where 201 parents with children in elementary school were recruited through social networks. In the quantitative part, the results revealed that cognitive and spiritual coping strategies predominated, motivated by the level of parental involvement in their children's education. On the other hand, in the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview was used focusing on social relationship, self-blame, and planning, where the emotional and affective bond that parents provided to their children during this period was highlighted. However, their concern and frustration were also evidenced by not having the necessary competencies to support their children's tasks and being unfamiliar with the use of technology, so they sought help from specialists and family members to obtain technological and didactic support that would allow sustaining the parent-school dyad in the transition to online learning from home. These findings lead to a rethink of learning management from the perspective of parents, which gives rise to a digital communication model that links the cognitive, affective, and spiritual aspects.

Parents' Coping Strategies for their School Children's Issues: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Regarding the context of issue touched by the selected studies, a total of seven papers involved raising autism children (AlBusaidi et al, 2022;Amireh 2019;Brillet et al, 2023;Gül et al, 2022;Ilias et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2022), while five articles related to COVID-19 pandemic (Aznar et al, 2021;Dawes et al, 2021;Morgan et al,2022;Saini et al, 2023;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022) and raising intellectual disabilities children (Auriemma et al, 2021;Disasa 2022;Karaca & Şener, 2021;Rajan & Romate, 2022;Wilmot et al, 2023). Two papers focused on the parent-children relationship issue (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021) while following issue each research is regarding academic challenges (Tu et al, 2020), the coping strategy applied by children Santiago et al (2021), online learning from home Chara et al (2023), parent level of stress Cepuch et al (2022), raising Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children Wong and Wong (2021), raising disabled children (Kurowska et al, 2021), and social adjustment by left-behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 4).…”

“…A total of seven papers focused on the autism children (AlBusaidi et al, 2022;Amireh 2019;Brillet et al, 2023;Gül et al, 2022;Ilias et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2022), while six papers focused on disabled children (Auriemma et al, 2021;Disasa 2022;Karaca & Konuk Şener, 2021;Kurowska et al, 2021;Rajan & Romate, 2022;Wong & Wong, 2021). Meanwhile, five papers concentrated on adolescents (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021;Morgan et al, 2022;Saini et al, 2023;Tu et al, 2020), while the other three papers fixated on preschool & elementary school children (Chara et al, 2023;Dawes et al, 2021;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022). The following category of children contain a paper each: Children with leukemia or lymphoma (Cepuch et al, 2022), dyslexia children (Wilmot et al, 2023), children of Mexican origins (Santiago et al, 2021), home-school children (Aznar et al, 2021) and left behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 5).…”

“…Self-blame is a coping strategy that criticizes oneself for being responsible (Carver, 1997) and makes oneself feel guilty during stressful events (Chara et al, 2023). This review has identified self-blame strategy has been applied when parents are stressed in raising autistic children (Amireh, 2019;Brillet et al, 2023), coping with the stressful condition during the COVID-19 pandemic for their home-school children (Aznar et al, 2021), and regarding online learning methods occurred to their school's children during the pandemic (Chara et al, 2023).…”

“…At the same time, the study by Ilias et al (2019) also revealed that parents having and raising autistic children strengthened their spiritual faith. When parents are stressed due to their children needing to go through online learning from home, parents employ a spiritual coping strategy (Chara et al, 2023).…”

“…Aznar et al (2021) study on the stressful environment during the COVID-19 pandemic has noted that accepting coping strategies results in positive home-schooling relationships for their children. Parents also employ an acceptance coping strategy during stressful events when their children must go through sudden online learning-from-home conditions by accepting the reality without avoiding it (Chara et al, 2023).…”